Kingdom of the Taklamacan
The Kingdom of the Taklamacan existed as an independent nation between 2005 and 2010. It was a successor state of the Kingdom of Atlantis and a predecessor state of the Empire of Moylurg, and was founded during October 2005 by HM King Declan I, who at the time ruled as King of the Taklamacan, King of Thebes, and King of Saqqara. History 2005 When founded, the Taklamacan was a very small nation, but as time went by it grew and so did the power of the monarch. The new kingdom immediately and consistently had problems with a nearby people, which the Taklamacanians called "barbarians". Constant attacks - becoming more and more violent, injuring some Taklamacanians - forced the Taklamacan to evolve quickly. Because of this, areas were set up where injured persons could be treated. These attacks did not however stop the kingdom from developing its art and culture. The kingdom became a melting pot of new ideas and creation, not just a war zone. The war with the barbarians started to die down, and the King ordered people to go out and see what materials could be found. One group returned with tree sap in a liquid and solid form. The liquid was used as glue and the solid was used in art. Declan I ordered a mining outpost to be set up to bring lots of these materials to the kingdom every day. The kingdom became strong and vibrant, and soon solid sap was used as a form of currency within the kingdom. It was during this time that Declan I established the Papacy of the Proto-Cults. After a few months of the Taklamacan being a strong, artistic nation, the kingdom suddenly entered an unstable period. Alexander I of the Taklamacan took over half of the kingdom and declared himself King, starting a civil war against Declan I. This civil war caused the art and creation of the kingdom to go into decline and stop, although Declan I defeated Alexander I and reasserted his rule over the whole kingdom. A short while afterwards, Declan I uncovered a major conspiracy against him which had been led by Pope Alexander I - the Pope was found guilty of treason and deposed from the Papacy before he could seize power, however. 2006 The Taklamacan started to rebuild from the civil war, but then in the summer of 2006 King Declan I was overthrown by Joshua I of the Taklamacan, who managed to seize power by bribing citizens and by exploiting their fears about the turmoil the nation had been going through, and possibly with the help of former supporters of Alexander I and Pope Alexander. The decline of the Taklamacan continued - if not worsened - under Joshua I, who ordered a massive increase in the amount of resources that the Taklamacanian outposts sent to the Kingdom, leading to the outposts declaring independence from the Taklamacan. With the main sources of the Kingdom's resources cut off, the societal and cultural decline of the Taklamacan accelerated. Declan I and many of his supporters had started an insurgency against Joshua I, seizing control of the southern-most sandy regions of the Taklamacan. While Joshua I attempted to deal with Declan's insurgency, the barbarians renewed their attacks on the Taklamacan. The Taklamacanian army was defeated by the barbarians at a battle at Hedge Row after the barbarians had invaded the Northern Grass Plains of the Taklamacan, and Joshua I was forced to abandon the whole northern part of the Kingdom to the barbarians. At the end of a week of Joshua I being in power, chaotic even by the standards of this period of Taklamacanian history, Declan I and his supporters attacked the capital - the citizens of the Taklamacan deposed Joshua I and invited Declan I to once more take the throne. By then, however, it was all too late - the artistic, creative kingdom was dead, and what was left was very weak. 2007 The remnant of the Taklamacan that existed after this turmoil was further weakened when the capital was sacked by the barbarians and yet another civil war broke out when a new king, Joshua II of the Taklamacan, took over half of what was left of the kingdom. He soon abdicated and the war ended, but the damage done was now irreparable, and the Taklamacan fell into a dark age, at some points the monarch's authority becoming merely nominal. The Taklamacan rose again in late 2007 when the old citizens expessed a interest in rebuilding the nation - Declan I had a coronation, and outposts and military bases were made for the kingdom. The barbarian attacks are presumed to have stopped by this point, and the Taklamacan once more became a strong nation. Unification with Moylurg After a few years, in 2009 the Kingdom of Moylurg was created and the Taklamacan was a Moylurgian Commonwealth Realm, probably some time during December 2009. The nation was then united with the Empire of Moylurg in March 2010, and so has become part of the present-day Kingdom of Wilcsland. Culture The Taklamacan was initially a very artistic nation. Its art was based on the art from the kingdoms that came before, and was valued highly throughout the area - for example, when a war-like kingdom offered some troops to help defend against the barbarians, it asked for some art in return. Small structures were built around the kingdom for storage and other purposes, and like the Kingdoms of South Bank and Atlantis before it, the Taklamacan created its own writing system: Taklamacan Hieroglyphics The Taklamacan glyphs were used a lot in the Taklamacan to record history and shipments of materials. While no examples of this forgotten system are known, they were placed on countless wooden, metal, and stone objects created in the Taklamacan and so the likelihood of objects with these glyphs on them having survived to the present day is very high.